Argentina: Occupy, resist, produce!

Fasinpat is located in the industrial suburb of Neuquen, the biggest city in Patagonia. It produces ceramic tiles. [Yiannis Biliris/Al Jazeera]

Neuquen, Argentina- As a consequence of the 2001 crisis in Argentina, many people, especially those of the worker class, lost their jobs.

But in Patagonia, in the south of Argentina, one factory gained fame, first locally and then nationally and internationally because the workers refused to accept the loss of their jobs.

The workers of the ceramic tile factory, Zanon, located in the city of Neuquen, occupied the site and effectively resisted all attempts by factory managers and government authorities to expel them. They kept the factory running, maintained production quotas, and saved their jobs.

In August 2009, the provinciallegislature voted to expropriate the factory to the workers' cooperative legally and indefinitely. The national government took three years to legally recognise the ownership transfer.

The factory has been renamed Fasinpat, an acronym for Factoria Sin Patrones - Factory Without Bosses, and has since become profitable.

With part of the profits, the cooperative invested in local projects such as the construction of a local hospital. It also developed relations with the indigenous Mapuche community to buy clay from their lands to use as raw material.

The factory was renamed from Zenon to Fasinpat, an acronym for 'Factoria Sin Patrones' - 'Factory Without Bosses'. [Yiannis Biliris/Al Jazeera]

The social movement received support not only from Neuquen residents, but also from many artists as well as other communities. [Yiannis Biliris/Al Jazeera]

'We don't forget the people who supported us in our hardest moments, or the 100,000 people who signed the petition supporting our bill,' a worker said. [Yiannis Biliris/Al Jazeera]

Workers took over the management of the factory and are now in charge of quality control and production. [Yiannis Biliris/Al Jazeera]

For the last 13 years, Fasinpat has been operating as a self-managed production site. While the workers originally sought the nationalisation of the factory, it is now a cooperative. [Yiannis Biliris/Al Jazeera]

The workers mark their working hours by clocking in and out on time-cards. Today, 450 families in the region of Neuquen are dependent on Fasinpat. [Yiannis Biliris/Al Jazeera]

Stock management is a crucial task, especially in the still unstable Argentinian economy. [Yiannis Biliris/Al Jazeera]

Machinery at the factory is becoming outdated and the workers are trying to obtain a loan to modernise, despite the government's opposition. [Yiannis Biliris/Al Jazeera]

The packaging of the tiles still carries the original Zanon logo, next to the new name, Fasinpat, as an administrative reference. [Yiannis Biliris/Al Jazeera]

As of 2009, the factory legally belongs to the workers. [Yiannis Biliris/Al Jazeera]